Tag Archives: Tools

Too Much Reliance on SatNav and online maps?

23 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Human, Automation, Tools

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Knock on the door from a person with a delivery said “Took ages to find your house, is your postcode correct?”. Not quite what I expected to hear. Having lived in the house for a number years and the post office delivering to my house with the same postcode I have had since moving in nothing has changed on my side.

So what’s happened. After some simple checks it appears Google Maps have somehow shifted my postcode over a few roads. That does explain a lot as to why some people have found it hard to find my location in the past such as taxi drivers, takeaways and delivery drivers etc.

I have raised a case on Google Maps to have this corrected

It does raise the question though about how reliant we are becoming on technology to find our way and give locations. Following a map on your phones and devices and not refering back to a map or even looking at the street names (Are you on the right road!).

How much trust do you put into your device and gps to advise your location? There are some great and fairly accurate (GPS dependant) tools/apps such as What 3 Words to find a location, but when relying on a postcode, how much trust do you put in it? For me a SatNav or Online Map will get you to the general location. Now you need to use some detective work to find the place your meant to be.

When finding places there is nothing like carrying map. I still have and use an A-Z Street Map when going to some new places and an OS Map. A road atlas in the car to help plan my route and gain my sense of direction for where I am about to travel to (when not in lockdown of course).

I teach navigation as part of my Scouting and Bushcraft activities in my spare time and always start with the basics of maps and compasses. These navigation methods are very relevant and needed, however the reliance on technology to find a way is still the instinctive urge. Using devices to find your way on an online mapping tool will only be as good as your signal and battery life. Saying that, it is always useful to help with traffic information and other things that could delay your journey. As long as someone with a hand cart full of mobiles isnt ruining your journey.

Online maps do have a place and are useful. Backing that up with a paper based map is always a good option. You may find places you didnt know existed locally!

Proving it – “If it’s obvious prove it. If you can’t prove it, it’s not obvious.”

08 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Human, Tools

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I first wrote about this phrase back in December 2014 – “If it’s obvious prove it. If you can’t prove it, it’s not obvious“, which is one of the phrase tools I use when writing things down for others and I have been using this alot with others to help them with writing documentation and helping fill out applications.

I am republishing this blog again as it may be relevent for others, so here is the blog:

This is a phrase that I use a lot and I first came across many, many years ago from someone I previously worked with. Since then it has stuck with me.

When writing documents how often do we assume that the reader will know what we mean or understand that just because we know something is there that they do. I have seen many occasions and have fallen into the trap occasionally myself where you write about something in the manner that you know all the facts but don’t convey them.

An example of this could be a proposal or technical document;

The device has two power supplies;

  • To a technical mind the instant reaction might be that this will probably be connected to two separate power supplies and backed up by generators and UPS.
  • To a financial mind the instant reaction might be that this is extra cost not justified.
  • To the engineer who checks the proposal – I wonder how thats going to be configured?

Where in fact the writer forgot to mention that the device was a chassis that needed two power supplies to provide enough power to all the devices placed into that chassis and is fed from one power supply.

OK – in reality you should always look for redundancy and in this example that could equal four power supplies, but this example shows how easy one statement can be misinterpreted because it was obvious to the writer and not the reader.

Just food for thought… Try running that phrase against the next document, email, CV, Application, etc that you write and put yourself in the readers place.

Hope this helps you with your writing.

Sageous Advice from Daily Stoics

03 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in Productivity, Tools

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See Hear SayFurthering my Personal Journalling I have decided that for 2020 I would give the “Daily Stoic” book and journal a go.

I am doing this along side my normal daily journaling and keeping the two separate for now at least.

I’m up to Journal number 28 with 4380 pages written so far and still going strong.

A couple of colleagues have tried the Daily Stoic before and gave it good reviews. The books basically take passages and quotes from Philosophers/Stoics  Epictetus  55 – 135 AD, Seneca 54 BC- 39 AD and Marcus Aurelius 121-180 AD and provide translations into modern life.

Stoicism is a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world – Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism

3 Days in and its going well so far starting my day with the relevant dated page in the book, followed by writing down some Morning and Evening reflections into the Journal. It will take all year to complete the book so will need some habit forming to do this morning and evening. I can see times where this is not practical and would need some planning as carrying the books around is not something I really want to be doing too much. This is where some of it may end up as a digital entry added in at some point in the future.

The advice so far has been on self reflection on choices, learning and saying no to get to those things that matter. You could say it is common sense, but for me its getting the right mindset using some guidance.

Is it worth doing this? At the moment I would say its a bit early in the journey and writing to decide, however so far I have found the advice to be good and the use of the reflection time to be worth while. Writing down notes on what I have read/learnt is a great method of remembering and does reinforce my thoughts. It will be interesting to see if I am still doing this in a few months time and look back against what I have written.

I would like to hear if you have used these books and your thoughts.

Links

The Daily Stoic Website

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living: Featuring new translations of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius

The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living

 

Personal Knowledge Management System – Revised for 2020

02 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Digital, Productivity, Social Media, Tools

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As the new year has begun, its time to review my Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS) on how I consume information and knowledge, I have blogged about this before and have updated for 2020.

I still split and keep apart my personal and professional lives on Social Media, although occasionally they may cross where appropriate.

Since the last time I wrote about this the amount of information and data that is available has grown and multiplied on a huge scale. Keeping track of what you need to drink from the fast flow of the firehose of information is itself something that needs managing. This is why I have set up my feeds in the manner illustrated below.

PKMS

Personal Life

Personal Journal

Journalling in both a Personal and Work life is a useful tool to keep notes on your thoughts and ideas. In my personal life I still opt for recording these in a Moleskine – See my blog post No batteries required for further details. I find the Moleskine a great notebook to use and the pocket version a good size to use.

Social Media

I separate from my work life from my personal life using things like Instagram and Facebook for friends and family with appropriate security settings in place. Even with those settings you still need to consider that once something is online, it could be public in the future. Wikipedia lists 186 Social Media Websites and this list is out of date. I choose a few mainstream that I am comfortable with. 2020 may see me have a look at some of the others to see if there is any benefit or other data I am missing.

Professional Life

Research

This is split into several areas and these are a few of the inputs that I use to grab information, feeds, data from:

  • Podcasts
  • Audio subscriptions
  • Videos
  • RSS Feeds
  • Web Searches
  • Blog Posts

Podcasts cover both Audio and Video casts that I watch/stream online or download to my Media Player (Audio and Videos) to listen to on journeys (Audio). The mobile is a great device for using as a media player across these casts.

Flipboard

Flipboard provides another stream of data that I consume bringing in news feeds from many sources around a series of topics. It does work well on a mobile device allowing you to flip the pages through the articles.

Feedly

Feedly provides an aggregation tool which I use to collect the stories from blogs and web sites I regularly pull information from.  This provides a list of stories that can be scanned tin a few minutes on a single screen without going via multiple sites. Clicking on a story will bring up a snippet from the source site and provide the link to read the source article if required. Using a series of key strokes you can read the headlines, then move down the articles at a reasonable speed, stopping and opening when needed.

Sources can be categorised to allow an all view or just whats new in a category.

IFTTT

IFTTT (If This Then That) provides a level of automation to my lists from saving articles to creating alerts on topics and triggering different actions as needed to my devices. I would like to automate more of this PKMS to bring the information I need, but it can also help to scan other information to help innovate and see other points of views.

Thinking / Learning Time

This is where view the data streams through the tools and assimilate and think about what has been reported/said. I also use this time to learn and take courses.

Courses

Coursera is a great site to used, but there are lots of others from Industry and Vendors to open learning sites that I use as needed. Relative exams and certificates are then added to my LinkedIn pages.

Blogging and Being Social

From thoughts and research I will write about things through my blogs and publish these into Social Media streams such as Twitter and Linkedin.

I have also been producing a few podcast episodes with other technologists and will look to do some more in 2020.

I have been using GitHub to mainly support some courses but its there as an option to publish data and code in the future.

Do you have a Personal Knowledge Management System or using tools not mentioned above?

Joining the World of Dashcams

10 Tuesday Jul 2018

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DashcamI have decided to be a lemming and follow everyone in the move to equipping my car with Dashcams. Although not a new thing a recent boom in the use of cameras in vehicles has made this  now a very common practice to have one. It is easy to fit a Dashcam to any vehicle to record the driving habits of the driver and other road users.

These range from cheap Dashcams that can record to an SD Card through to more expensive models that send recordings to the cloud (Servers on the Internet) that can then be viewed through a mobile phone app.

So why be a Dashcam lemming? Following a near miss the other day with a car pulling out of a junction (give way) on me without looking at the traffic coming from the right, whilst I was coming along the road, I have decided its time to add some evidence just in case! Well I get this most mornings as the estate I live on is used as a short cut to miss out the main roads and queues of traffic. Time to join the masses.

Also because this is becoming the next thing on being able to easily upload footage to the authorities.

Dashcam footage submission website goes live

Advice from Cheshire Police on submission Dashcam footage

I have noticed that since getting camera’s on the car that there has been a reduction in the number of people that have tried to drive in my boot.

Perhaps with enough evidence I can get a Give Way Junction changed to a Stop Junction. I’m not looking to increase the number of drivers prosecuted, just make the estate I live on safer to drive.

And where do Dashcams fit with GDPR? Some good advice on the link below.

Dashboard Cams – do you need notify the ICO?

Cardboard & Electronics Education

30 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by in Innovation, Programming, STEM, Tools

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cardboardCardboard has been a part of childhood learning for a very long time, however its use has evolved from building things, making dens or sliding down grassy hills on it. The evolution on how this material is being used in learning is changing at a fast rate.

Google have been leading the way with the Google Cardboard Viewer that you can put your phone in and experience Virtual Reality at a low cost (phone excluded). There is now an increase of  cardboard kits available and coming on to the market, especially with kits like the Raspberry PI.

Here are some of the kits:

Google Cardboard

A cardboard viewer that allows you to use your mobile phone as a VR device.

https://vr.google.com/cardboard/

Google Voice

A cardboard kit incorporating a Raspberry PI and speaker that uses Google Home as a Voice Assistant. The kit contains a Google Bonnet board that provides functionality to the Raspberry PI and components.

https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/voice/

Google Vision

A cardboard kit incorporating a Raspberry PI and camera that uses Machine Learning to recognise objects. The kit contains a Google Bonnet board that provides functionality to the Raspberry PI and components.

https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/vision

IBM TJ Bot

A cardboard robot that you can build and incorporate a Raspberry PI to experience AI using IBM Watson.

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/initiatives/activitykits/tjbot/

Nintendo Labo

A set of cardboard modules that can be used with a Nintendo Switch

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Nintendo-Labo/Nintendo-Labo-1328637.html

These kits provide a great platform to build on existing skills and learn new skills using reasonably priced components.

Move over Plastics – Cardboard is here (again) !!!

Do you know of any other cardboard kits not listed above?

Digital Fit in 2018: Build up a Readership

25 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by in Digital, DigitalFit, Social Media, Tools

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binocularsIf you have been following this series of blog posts, you should now have a blog and a set of social channels. That’s a great start, however how do you get noticed? How to you get a readership? How can you increase your Digital Profile? These are questions that I was asked yesterday following my last post. Here are my thoughts on this topic.

Have you ever Googled yourself? (other search engines are available). Did you appear in any of the search results or not? Did you check the images as well?

If you already have a presence in a blog or social channels the chances are that the search engine has found one of these – unless you have a name that competes with someone with a stronger profile, where if you go through the results you should be there.  If you do not have any social presence its most likely you will not feature in the results.

Looking yourself up on a search engine is also a good way of checking any security or privacy settings you have on your social platforms. Have you opened up enough for the search engines to find you, or have you exposed too much and need to dial it back a bit.

There isn’t a super magic sauce for building a readership and some of it will happen over time, however there are a number of things you can do to get started.

The content you post is only half of the story. People will often like to click through if the content is good to find out who has written it. Having a profile will help the reader understand who you are and your background.

Lets break this down into two main headings. Profile and Content.

Profile

Blog Profile

In most blogging platforms you can set your profile within your account. It is important to ensure that you have a good profile picture in place as well. Search engines love profile data as it tells them who has written the blog. Make sure you set the metadata on the picture as well. Name, Description, and Keywords which search engine pick up on.

Blog About

Setting your About page to a good description of yourself. Think about using other sites such as about.me Here is my profile as an example – https://about.me/maxhemingway. You will see that it links back to my blog, twitter and other sites. You can also set these on your blog site using icons to link back to other pages.

 

Social Channel Profiles

Again it is important to set your profile and picture. Keep consistency in your profile information, although an alternative profile picture can be used.

At the end of this you will end up with a small web of interlinks between your sites.

Content

Searchable Subjects – Blogs

Your subject and content are key in order to gain a readership. This will be down to what subjects you blog on, however using tags and keyword functions in your blog can also help search engines find your content. There are lots of search engines in use today and each has its quirks on how it ranks results and collects data, however using the standard features in your blog for Categories and Tags can help search engines. It also helps group content you write on your site and makes any local site searching using the blog search engine easy.

Posting regular content also helps build a readership and following.

Broadcasting content

When you write a blog or post something in a social channel you can link between the channels so one post can automatically be posted in other channels. For instance, when I post a blog, it also gets broadcast out on Twitter, Google + and LinkedIn using the Sharing function. You can link to a number of other channels as well.

Once a reader finds your blog post, they can have a look at the other content on your site. If its good, you can build a set of followers.

Timing

The time that you publish your blog or tweets can also have an effect on your readership levels due to different time zones around the world. I find that publishing after GMT 14:00 is usually a good time, but this may differ depending upon your own timezone and your target audience.

Headlines

Popular Press has mastered this art and provides its reader with a catchy headline to its stories. You need to think about the message your headine or tweet is trying to convey. Will it attract the readers you want, or is it not quite on message. Short snappy headlines pull in the readers.

Social Channels

Social channels can provide a readership and following for your content. For example Twitter uses hashtags which are searchable via twitter and let you view tweets of a similar hashtag. Love them or hate them, the hashtag is a useful tool in building your readership.

Following the followers

You don’t have to follow lots of people to get a good following, however if people are following you, its because they like the subject you are communicating. They may have similar views or posts, so following them back may help you with research into your next post.

The important part to remember (as mentioned in my last blog post) is that social platforms are relational not transactional. Following people in your field/subject also shows your readers that you are interested in your topic and the views of others.

Re-tweeted

Having good content and messages that are re-tweeted or re-blogged by someone else introduces your post to a different circles of followers. This only happens though if people consider your content and messages to be relevant to their followers and readership.

Talk

When your in conversation and a subject comes up that you have blogged about, tell people you have a point of view on that as reference your work. Send out links to people so they can find it easily.

Guest Write

Consider guest writing for a blog or channel as they often provider a link back to the authors blog/twitter. This usually needs you to be established with some good content in the first place before being accepted as a guest writer.

Lastly, time is a factor. It does take time to build up your content, build followers and getting the search engines to list you in the results, however once you start getting noticed, your readership does go up.

Try searching for yourself in a couple of weeks again. Any change?

 

Further Reading:

Digital Mindset

Digital Fit in 2018: Start Blogging

Digital Fit in 2018: Get Social

A-Z of Digital – K is for Knowledge

A-Z of Digital – S is for Social

 

Digital Fit in 2018: Get Social

24 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Digital, DigitalFit, Social Media, Tools

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SocialFollowing on my series on Digital Fit in 2018, being social is an important part of building your Digital Profile. There are two main things which spring to mind when you mention the word social. Going out with family and friends, and using tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc.

In this post I mean the latter. Using these social tools to gain an understanding of what is going on in the world, industry and your focus areas, as well as using the platforms to broadcast your own views and opinions.

There are groupings of favorable social tools which depend upon your age range and have become the defacto tools you use. For some its Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. For others its Snapchat, Flickr, YouTube, Pintrest. There are many different combinations and its mainly down to what we have been comfortable with for a period of time.

There are many different social platforms available and some are more mainstream than others. Some are new and some have fallen out of favour with people and usage has decreased on them. Which ever platforms you use will be down to how you want to evolve your usage of them.

Social tools provide an abundance of information that you can consume real time and through historical views. Choosing what to view will be down to personal preference.

Using the social tools as a broadcast channel is a good method to getting your voice heard on subjects that you want to discuss. It will take time to build a following or readership so don’t be put off by this or the fact that people may follow then unfollow depending if your messages are useful to them. The main thing is to keep up a regular drumbeat of postings or tweets, even if its once a week.

It is important to remember that social platforms are relational not transactional – understanding your audience is key.

Here are some tips to help you:

  • Check your messages before posting
  • Respond to comments
  • Give credit
  • Pick who you follow and regularly check to see you have
  • See who is following you – Are your messages pulling in the right audience – do you need to change anything
  • Don’t over hashtag your posts

Here are my top 5 tips on being Social Media Savvy

Social Channels – Choose the channels that you want to use and look at the audience on those channels. They type of things being posted. Split your channels between personal and professional work.

Listen, Research, Listen Again – Listening to what is going on in your channels is important to understand the trends and topics being talked about.

Be Authentic And True – Be yourself – don’t try to be someone your not.

Keep It Regular and Relevant – Posting a couple of times a week is a good measure. Making sure that your posts are relevant to what you want to say and what your audience is looking for.  You could always automate your posts – e.g. writing some blog posts and having them published during the week via a scheduler.

Think Security – Would you want anyone outside your friends network seeing that post? Eventually your post could be public as once something is posted you don’t have control on what other people can do with it.

Source: A-Z of Digital – S is for Social

Further Reading:

Digital Mindset

Digital Fit in 2018: Start Blogging

A-Z of Digital – K is for Knowledge

A-Z of Digital – S is for Social

Digital Fit in 2018: Start Blogging

02 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Digital, DigitalFit, Social Media, Tools

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Blog TilesThis is the first in a series of posts I will be doing in 2018 about getting Digital Fit. By this I mean achieving the right Digital Mindset for your current or future role and honing your skills to meet the demands of the Digital Era.

There is no single course or video that can achieve this goal, however there are many that can help you along the journey.

“To Blog or Not to Blog!”, Blogging isn’t for everyone and may not come naturally, however it plays a big part in the Digital Era, whether you are reading them or publishing them, you will read blogs at some point. Your reading this one!

One of the biggest issues with starting a blog is what content should you be writing about. Having an idea about what your blog is going to be about is the first step. Here are some ideas:

  • Work based subject area
  • Re-enforce your learning areas by blogging about them
  • Hobby or interest

The main key points to blogging for me are:

  • Be Authentic
  • Be yourself
  • Don’t be afraid on posting that idea or thought
  • Don’t be afraid of posting different opinions
  • You learn things doing research for your blog posts
  • Post regularly
  • Blogging helps build your confidence
  • Blogging helps build an audience

The next stage is to choose where to host your blog. There are many different blogging platforms available that you can choose from. I have listed two Free Blogging Sites below, but there are many more that you can find using an internet search. There are already lots of reviews on which blogging site to choose and it really depends upon your needs. I’ll leave the choice down to you and your own research:

I myself have chosen WordPress* as my blogging platform as it is well established and has a set a great features available on the free tier:

  • Sharing with Social platforms
  • Scheduling posts to be published at a later date
  • Good site usage statistics
  • Search indexing

 

When you publish a blog, you should use other social platforms such as Twitter, Linked-In and Facebook (to name a few) to share the post which will help build your audience.

References

 

(*I am not affiliated with WordPress or receiving any kick back from this post from them)

 

Pen based Productivity Tools – The Chronodex 2018

27 Wednesday Dec 2017

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ChronodexIts good to see that Patrick Ng has released the first part of the Chronodex for Jan to Jun 2018. Now in its 6th year of production. Still a favorite of mine due to its design and ease to use.

This is primarily meant for the Midori Traveller Notebook system, but it can be used without.

There is still a place for journalling using a pen rather than a blog post as discussed here No Batteries Required: My Personal Journal.  I’m now on Journal 22 and still going strong with those daily entries.

Link to downloads:

http://scription.typepad.com/blog/2017/12/scription-chronodex-weekly-planner-jan-jun-2018-released.html